David Blair became Chief Foreign Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph in November 2011. He previously worked for the paper as Diplomatic Editor, Africa Correspondent and Middle East Correspondent.

Al-Qaeda's grip on Mali will be broken, thanks to the errors of terrorists

I’m in Mali where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is suffering serious defeats for the first time. French forces and their Malian allies have driven AQIM out of two towns: Diabaly, which I visited with the first French military column on Monday, and Konna.

These are two places that AQIM and its allies captured when they moved out of their stronghold in the north and into southern Mali earlier this month. That turns out to have been a catastrophic error. I’m going to stick my neck out and say that we have seen the high water mark of AQIM’s success in Mali. From now on, they will probably encounter one reverse after another. It will be a slow and painful process, but AQIM’s grip on Mali will be broken.

And it all started because of the hubris of the terrorist movement’s leadership. If they had been content simply to hold on to their vast domain in northern Mali – which covers over 300,000 square miles and includes arms dumps, airports and ready-made training facilities – there would have been no French intervention. The process of assembling an African force to dislodge AQIM would have gone ahead at a snail’s pace. An offensive against them would not have started until September at the earliest. They took over the north last March, so this timetable would have given AQIM at least 19 months of unchallenged control over a vast expanse of real estate. That would have been 19 months to arm, train, recruit and make money from trans-Saharan smuggling routes.

Instead, they threw it away by choosing to move forwards and capture still more of Mali earlier this month. Remember that the French intervention was triggered by AQIM’s invasion of the south, not its hold on the north. If AQIM had been sensible enough to sit tight, nothing would have happened. Now they must live with the consequences.

We journalists are sometimes guilty of portraying terrorist leaders as wily, ruthless geniuses and criminal masterminds. AQIM’s big mistake only goes to show that terrorists are just as fallible and prone to error as the rest of us.